Calling all bandsaw experts. Need some rookie advice

[Ricky Pray]

I have a Rikon 10-325. I have had it pretty hard the last 10 months or so since I have had it. I started with Lennox blades and have since switched to Highland blades.

I never had this issue with the Lennox but it seems like it has presented itself more that last couple of Highland blades. I believe they are the Woodworker blades for cutting green wood as that is what I usually deal with.

I spent some time cutting duck and goose call blanks with a brand new blade on the saw about a week ago. I was cutting an ebony wood that is very hard. I cut a little over 2 days. Everything cut perfectly. Straight and quick. I went out there today to work on a crotch piece that I have been saving. I could not get a straight cut from the get go. Wandering cuts from the start.

The blade before this wandered badly right out the package. New blade had zero wander on it.

I am trying to decide if it is simply a dull blade or if I may have an issue somewhere else. Seems strange to go from perfect cut to supreme wander in the matter of a couple days.

I left the saw tensioned, maybe that could have been the issue?

Any ideas?

[John K Jordan]

Ricky, I'm certainly no bandsaw expert. I have several bandsaws, including an 18" Rikon. I had wandering cut problems with a smaller Delta for a while.

I assume your top and bottom guides are adjusted properly. You say you cut ebony straight then the blade wandered on the crotch. Did you go back afterwards and see if the ebony still cut straight? I suspect it would.

You say you left it tensioned. In my experience, this is unlikely to be the problem. However, insufficient tension could well be. How are you tensioning? Over the years I tried setting the tension with several methods (the saw gauge, side deflection, flutter, etc) and finally bought a bandsaw Starrett tension gauge. I was surprised at how low a tension I had been using. Increasing the tension helped tremendously. If the tension is too low the blade will tend to wander, sometimes following the grain in certain woods. A worn blade with low tension will be worse, but that doesn't sound like your case unless cutting a lot of ebony caused a lot of wear on the blade. Worn blade+low tension+thick wood+wet wood+wild grain: watch out!

The tension indicators built into almost every bandsaw are way off. I saw this from my own checks and from books I have from the bandsaw experts. One book recommends setting the indicator to the next largest blade size. I found that even that was not sufficient for some blades.

You didn't say what size of blade you used. I used to use much larger blades, usually 3/4", but now I use smaller blades. I found that properly tensioning the larger blades on my smaller woodworking bandsaw was almost mechanically impossible and even difficult on the 18" saw. I switched to 1/2" 3tpi for most of my sawing and 1/2" 4tpi for when I want a cleaner cut. I process a lot of green wood into turning blanks and these blades work well for even wet wood 12" thick. They cut straight for everything I've tried. (I recently cut up a bunch of very dense wet dogwood, maple, cedar, cherry, sassafras, birch, elm, and others.) BTW, on the 18" saw I use blades made up by a local firm from Lenox stock. If I remember, they are about $15 or so each.

I did get a lot out of several books, one by Mark Duginske and the other by Lonnie Bird.

JKJ

[Erik Loza]

How does that blade cut a piece of softer wood? My money is that it's dull. You don't state what width blade this is but I can see excessive hand pressure plus possibly the wrong blade/tooth set for that species, getting dulled by a tropical hardwood.

Just my 2 cents.

Erik

[Jim Finn]

In my experience, a dull blade has always been the cause of wondering blade or "drift". I re-saw hard and soft woods seven inches deep using a Supercut 1/2" carbide blade that is recommended for re-sawing. I have also re- sharpened this blade with success.

[lowell holmes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGbZqWac0jUiew

View the video above.

[Ricky Pray]

The blade is a Highland woodworker 1/2" 3tpi. I have the saw set up pretty well and have watched the video several times. I have the saw about maxed on tension. I have never had issues with tracking as bad as I have the last two blades. I have used cheap blades that were dull as crap and they still tracked okay. It seems like the last two blades bottomed out the tension and none of the others have. I am thinking about trying other blades and seeing if that helps.

[Ricky Pray]

Btw: the wood jumps off the fence almost right away into the cut. I found myself fighting the blade and just quit cutting. Not from pushing into the blade but pushing against the blade to get it remotely close to my desired measurement. Really weird for a blade that was cutting perfectly just a couple days before. It may have dulled while I was cutting through the first piece which was rather thick and hard wood.

[Andrew Hughes]

I'm a bandsaw saw expert only because I say I am.:)
Your problem sounds like a dull blade.Some of the Ebonys I've cut have pockets of silica that what's kills a sharp point.
It helps to keep the blade clean the oils will build up and heat the tips and kill the blade.
We really pay a high price to use exocits esp ebony.
Good luck.

[John K Jordan]

...It seems like the last two blades bottomed out the tension and none of the others have. I am thinking about trying other blades and seeing if that helps.

Perhaps the blades are a tiny bit too long. I got one like that once and could not tension it. A blade is hard to measure so I counted the teeth to compare it with one that worked properly. In my experience a dull blade not tensioned enough is the worst case, assuming all else is equal.

Another thing that used to be common on the older Delta and Jet 14" saws was the tensioner bracket would bend over time making tensioning even more difficult. I replaced the one on my older Delta with a beefier one from Itura Design. My 18" Rikon used a different design - I don't know about the smaller Rikon. If you still have one of the older blades that worked well you might try installing it just to see if the tensioner behaves as before. If so, the new blade is probably a bit longer. If not, maybe something changed on the saw.

If the teeth on one side of the blade are duller than those on the other, the blade will likely deflect to the side.

It is hard for me to tell if the teeth are sharp. What I find works best is run my thumbnail over a tooth and see if it catches or slides.

BTW, I have sharpened many blades with a thin metal-cutting disk in a Dremel tool. I leave the blade on the saw, mark the beginning point, touch the flat of the little disk to the front of a tooth at the right angle (I don't try to sharpen inside the gullet), then move to the next tooth. I often sharpen twice like this before throwing out the blade. This is time consuming on a blade nearly 12' long with a lot of teeth so I tend to sharpen the 3tpi blades more than the finer toothed blades.

JKJ

[Barry Richardson]

I agree with the others, in my experience it is almost always a dull blade, you may have hit some imbedded grit or something.......

[glenn bradley]

Always plenty of bandsaw "experts" around. We all have our experiences and tend to think the things that work for us are "right"; maybe they are ;). Blade wandering signals a dull or damaged blade to me. Especially since you were cutting well and then had a sudden transition. This implies a sudden change. Your blade wear may be gradual but, your change of material was not. The combination may have made the change appear sudden.

At any rate, I do not run high tension as a means of correcting other problems. When cutting metal (much slower blade speeds) the tension is run quite high. For woodworking, I use the "flutter" method which only applies enough tension to the blade to make it run smoothly without guides in place. A major qualifier for this method is the blade type. I am not running carbide or even bi-metal blades in this manner.

The point being, you cannot force a blade to track any more than you can un-warp wood. This is probably a good analogy since some folks try to un-warp wood and even claim some degree of success but, I am wandering off course. A blade that is proper for the material being cut and in good shape will behave itself if the saw is aligned. You were having good results before so unless something else happened, I'm looking at the blade.

[lowell holmes]

[QUOTE=glenn bradley;2551434]Always plenty of bandsaw "experts" around.

That's exactly why I recommended the Snodgrass video. He is an expert.

[Curt Harms]

I don't know about all Highland Hardware bandsaw blades but the Woodslicer has a reputation for cutting really smoothly but not staying sharp very long. If I were cutting tropicals or hard/abrasive wood much I'd probably look at a bimetal like the Lenox Diemaster2. I use SuperCut bandsaw blades that seem to wear well but I don't cut anything abrasive or hard.

[lowell holmes]

I've bought 105" blades from Highland Hardware. I buy their stock blades, not some exotic. They all have been good blades.

[Erik Loza]

Back when David Marks was doing demos for Minimax, his go-to blade for the exotic species was a 1/2" Die-Master II. You need to watch the feed rate and pressure. That's the #1 culprit I see for owners dulling their blades (myself included).

Erik

[Eric D Matson]

This is by far the best setup for a bandsaw I have seen. I made cuts with mine and then set it up like he does and the results were more than noticeable. Well worth the watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGbZqWac0jU